


Kaldur's Rite

by MetellaStella



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Adventure, Coming of Age, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-24 17:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetellaStella/pseuds/MetellaStella
Summary: Kaldur was not new to burns.





	1. Light and Dark

Kaldur was not new to burns.  
  
Greenhorn students in Shayeris, Atlantis working with channeling biological shockwaves, an ability select to only part of the Atlantean population, no matter how high their natural ability, always ended up with at least minor electrical burns in one way or another.   
  
Kaldur would later tell Kid Flash that what he learned was sorcery, but with its recently forged contact- historically speaking- to the surface world, Atlatean cities had instituted both lessons and supplemental vocabulary for other subjects in their schools that reflected education in surface schools.  
  
You must artificially provide additional resistance to the amps your body produces, the teachers told their pupils. This would become automatic soon enough, but first it was a skill that had to be practiced and drilled over and over. Your resilience to the electricity would also build up over time, and the adolescent brain, as it matured, would adjust to at once sensing your tolerance threshold. In olden days, it was considered bad taste to throttle the strength of the current too much, viewed as weakness. The modern era was a much more forgiving time.   
  
In the early days of this segment Atlantean evolution, the ability had far overstepped their bodies' initial tolerance. The very reason they hadn't electrocuted themselves out of existence was their psychic control over the phenomenon, and their intelligence. Those that could wield and subsequently build themselves up to the highest voltage, to use the new scientific term, were usually those that gained the most favor and sired the most children.  
  
Now, in the present, a surge too powerful for students' budding skill level to mentally sync with, running both over and under their skin, was enough to deter even moderately brash and hardheaded trainees from overextending themselves too much by trying anything too advanced.  
  
Of course, Kaldur was not brash or hardheaded, so the measured and cautious boy avoided the brunt of the physical discomfort during those years. Remnants of the old cultural sentiments slinked into his interactions with some of his more traditionally macho peers, but Kaldur, ever cool and logical, didn't pay their taunts much heed.   
  
In contrast, Kaldur's "First Fire," as Atlanteans called the rite of passage, went very, very badly in a quite unexpected and novel way.  
  
At twelve years old, as a kickoff point for their compulsory military service, Atlanteans (the ones who had legs) were expected to walk on land and face their first fire. 

  
The bonfire was ritually set with only pre-gathered sun-dried materials from under the ocean.   
  
In Kaldur's case, this meant a deep purplish algae from his hometown of Shayeris. Its coloration, a pigment newly labeled by the surface dwellers as phycobilin, was a result of its environment, much like his own melanin-rich dark skin. Except that the roles here were reversed. He had not grown up in a native place of that part of his decent, due to travel and mixing between the nation of the sea. Lighter blue-green and golden algae grew in shallow waters, where sunlight was plentiful. Those of Kaldur's ancestors that had grown up in the shallower water as well, however, not being photosynthetic or even sun-proof in general, developed the resilience to the sun beating down through the tropical ocean. Those that ventured deeper, where less and less sunlight filtered through, and darker algae grew, gained lighter skin, eyes and hair. Kaldur had inherited the latter two traits through a recessive strain in that half of his lineage.   
  
It wouldn't be until years later that he would muse to himself that perhaps a mix of algae types would have been more appropriate for his personal rite. The material fueling the flame seemed immaterial for a long time afterward in light of the ordeal itself.


	2. Adjustment

His father for whom he was named, Calvin Duram, and his mother, Sha'lain'a, led him on this fifth excursion to the surface, and most important to date. A middle-to-low-ranking royal worker, roughly equivalent to a bishop in the Catholic Church on land, or a duke under the English crown, accompanied them to oversee their task. 

A week before, they had towed the collection of sea plants in sacks to prepare them for burning. The summer weather was supposed to be rain-free for plenty enough time to dry them naturally, as custom dictated. Luckily- or unluckily, depending on you how you wanted to look at it- Kaldur's birthday fell during June, when the weather enabled the process easily. Some children had to wait for months after their birth dates for the seasons to change before the heat was deemed worthy enough. It wouldn't do to have some citizens have the buffer of low degrees around them, and others deprived of the advantage. It wouldn't do, either, to have others suffer more from higher degrees than others. 

Kaldur emerged from the water after them, sucking in through his mouth and nose and down his throat. Although he knew how to do this perfectly well, because of the other four times, it has been long enough since the twelve-year-old's last visit to the atmosphere that the unfamiliar sensation makes him sneeze. 

His mother smiled at him, looking to be on the verge of giving a soft chuckle at the reflex. He thought that one of the things he likes the very least about the land, is that his mother's long golden hair doesn't dance and billow around her. Here, it lies limp, and looks less colorful and more tangled, as if something had pressed and twisted the life out of it. 

It feels unnatural. 

Even more so than the water dripping off of him, making his skin crawl. 

Her bright expression almost makes up for it, except he knows her well enough to see that she is covering up worry for him. The corners of her eyes are just a little bit tighter than they should be for the cheerful smile. His father, too, is attempting to show nothing but unabashed pride at his milestone, but his chest, though it is puffed out, houses breath that is too carefully and consciously drawn to be completely normal. 

He turned his analytic mind to the surroundings instead of allowing himself to dwell too much on their unintentional emotional cues. The spot his parents had picked for him has fine-grained, pinkish sand and low rolling dunes. Through his education, his trained eye can tell that the beach had been washed completely flat by the sea within the last decade before they had started to build up again. 

The unlit pile of long-since-browned seaweed, nestled between two of the precariously formed hills, is a little more than waist high. 

His till now outwardly focused attention is interrupted by his gills, slightly tickled by both their deprivation of constantly flowing water and the replacement of salty, sandy breeze. What follows is also sort of like a sneeze, but also akin to a cough, purely from his neck. His mouth closes, his gills dilate instinctively with a small wet sound, and his arms come up with elbows pointed forward, in traditional Atlantean fashion, to politely block the dislodged water droplets from misting in both directions. 

Then he puts his arms back at his sides, and straightens his back.

"Do you need a few more minutes?" his father asks, the smallest ghost of a frown appearing at the second indication of his son being freshly out of his element.

Kaldur turns- rather than shakes- his head once and back. "No, I am fine."

"I am ready."


End file.
